The Shires review, 10 Year Plan: UK’s biggest country act uphold apple-pie values in predictable fashion

This fifth record from the British country duo lacks any foot-stomping belters

Ben Earle and Crissie Rhodes have made it big in the UK country scene (The Shires)

You’d be forgiven for not having heard of The Shires. Yes, the Hertfordshire duo may have been the first UK country musicians to achieve a Top 10 album – but the British country scene is small. And those within it, even the top dogs, remain beyond the mainstream. On their fifth album, Crissie Rhodes and Ben Earle attempt to bring the genre’s singsong melodies and apple-pie values to a new audience.

10 Year Plan is smooth sailing. Inoffensive, radio-ready country-pop without bite. Even “Sparks Fly”, a track about heated political debates over family dinners, devolves into mushy sentiments extolling the virtue of agreeing to disagree. While there is something to be said for putting out a defiantly joyous record right now, this album unfortunately doesn’t say it. Across the album, you’re left waiting for The Shires to pull the ripcord with a foot-stomping chorus that never arrives.

By the time a banjo twang introduces “10 Year Plan”, it’s a welcome return to Country 101. There’s that southern lilt. And those overly literal lyrics relayed in a catchy, disjointed listicle: “Gonna climb the Rockies / Maybe fly a plane / Buy a boat.” Pure, nonsensical joy. The song leans on formula but The Shires sell it with infectious vigour and schmaltz.

Rhodes and Earle’s voices feel capable – athletic but untested, like muscles in atrophy, coasting around the same ​racetrack again and again. Whereas fellow country duo Robert Plant and Alison Krauss often play their vocals against one another, Earle and Rhodes are about symmetry. Across 13 tracks, there are no unexpected flourishes or surprises. It is melodically indistinct and uninteresting. Everything is where it ought to be. That’s the problem.